Bella Unblocked

Archive for October 2015

It's local for me and not a huge chunk of money, plus I was able to tweak my schedule to get two days in a row off of work, so I figured, why not? All giddy with hope and possibility, I registered. And then immediately some sort of gut-rooted terror set in.

As I tried to explain my anticipation to my husband his response was "Why? Because you will finally have to identify yourself as a writer?" I think that may be just it.

Being a wife and a waitress who happens to write in her spare time feels safer than being A WRITER. Somehow making that part of my self-definition feels dangerous. I will have to introduce myself to other writers. To people who will want to know what I write. What I have written. What I will write. This scares me, apparently.

I am not entirely sure what I will get out of this conference (two days of seminars, networking and resources!), but I am hoping to come out more a writer than when I went in. However,
that all falls on me. No amount of seminars and books can make me a writer. It is entirely up to me to take words out of my own head and put them out somewhere for the public to see.

Here's to hoping some divine inspiration and self-motivation meet me there next weekend, and that I will want to write like never before. And here's to putting the knowledge that I am going out there for you so you will hopefully hold me to it with some expectancy of literary marvels to follow...

This story is one that I am most proud of. It started as a final project for a college creative writing class, sparked by an attempt to view the tragic brokenness of divorce through the eyes of a child. A semester later it was picked as a favorite of the English department faculty and was published in the college's literary magazine. It's a tad long, but worth posting to remind myself that I've written before and can write again.

**********

The
Day the Sky Fell

You know the story, the one about the
chicken who thinks that the sky fell on his head. He runs around yelling, “The
sky is falling! The sky is falling!” I’ve heard that story; but I’m here to
tell you that it’s nothing like the real thing, because I was there the day
that the sky fell down, and it’s nothing like the story.

The day before had been a typical day in
the summer of 19--. A light breeze blew and the sun tickled your cheeks. It was
one of those days that called you out-of-doors and held you captive in the
magnificent sunlight. A perfect day for a boy of my size to start making his
fortune, so I, along with my neighbor Frankie, started up a lemonade
stand. By noon we had made one dollar off our product- which sold at twenty
cents a cup. By suppertime we had a whole dollar and twenty cents.

The two of us went home that night:
Frankie with forty cents in his pocket and the rest jingling in mine, being as
they were my lemons that we squeezed the juice out of. The next day we were
going to do it again; we figured if we kept it up, by the end of the summer, we’d
have enough money to buy a boat for sailing out on the lake. We had it all
planned; our futures were upon us and we were ready.

But I didn’t account for what would happen
next. There was no way I could have, really. Stuff just isn’t supposed to
happen like it did.

The next day, I went to set up our stand
once more, eager to further my fortune. My pocket was full of yesterday’s
profit and my arms were full of that day’s bag of lemons.

I walked out the door to my front lawn, but
the lawn wasn’t there. Well… I suppose it was; only I couldn’t see any of it.
The lawn was covered with a flakey, blue mess that looked like someone had thrown
sheets of colored construction paper all over the lawn and the sidewalks. The
road looked the same, all covered in flakes of blue. The picket fence outlining
our front yard had pieces of the stuff skewered on each of the white points. In
fact, everything in sight was covered with blue sheets.

When I had gone to bed the night before,
all was normal outside. Nothing unusual was on our grass. I couldn’t remember
any unusual looking cloud, or cracks in the sky warning us the day before of
what we would face that day. It was as if someone had come in the night and
created this flakey disaster I was now staring at.

I looked up at the clouds to check and see
what the weather was looking like…only there were no clouds. There was no
weather. There was nothing.

The
sky was...gone.

Now, it’s hard to explain what nothing
looks like, but I tell you, I saw what wasn’t there. The blue expanse that had
been dotted with clouds and warm rays of light the day before was now nothing
but emptiness. Above my head was an eerie vacancy that shouldn’t have been.
Instead of sky there was... sort of a hum, more a sound than a sight, something
you felt but couldn’t touch. It was like there was a wild wind, but with no
movement. It was like the sun’s glow on a blistering day, only without the
light warming your skin.

I looked up again, and realized with
horror that it was the sky that was scattered on my front lawn. I leapt
backwards onto the safety of my doorstep. The sky was on my front lawn, and in
its place was nothing.

Somehow, the sky had fallen.

I screamed for my mother like I did
whenever I had a nightmare. I needed her to come and tell me everything was all
right. But the sound hissed out of my mouth, fell from my lips, and filled the
bareness around me, my voice blending with the hum. Nightmares are always worse
when you have to face them alone.

I looked for my neighbors. Their houses
were all there. Their mailboxes, their cars, everything was there, just like it
should have been! Only, everyone had pieces of the heavens strewn across their
grass, caught in their trees, and stuck on their fences.

But no one seemed to be around. Didn’t
they care? I briefly thought about calling the police or the fire department.
But what did they know about fallen skies? For as long as I could remember,
this had never happened. How was I
supposed to know how to handle it?

I was alone and desperate, so I did what
any boy of my size would have done if given a situation such as mine. Carefully,
I snapped a branch off the little piney shrub next to our doorstep. I poked the
ground, or the sky, I guess it was, with the branch. Nothing happened. No
sound. No feeling. No sudden explosions. I edged one toe off the step and
gingerly stood on what was once the sky. Again, nothing happened. Emboldened, I
bent and picked up a piece of it; it was flimsy like a sheet of the daily newspaper
that my father hid behind each morning at breakfast, but soft like the pairs of
flannel pajamas that my grandma gave me on Christmas every year. It was thin
like paper, but when I shook it, it didn’t crinkle, it didn’t rip. Next, I
threw it as high as I could. It didn’t suspend itself back where it belonged. Instead,
it floated noiselessly back onto the lawn, covering up the patch of green that
I had exposed. It was like the sky didn’t want to be fixed.

I ran inside, slammed the door, and leaned
my back against it. After counting to ten with my eyes squeezed tight, I opened
the door again, popped my head out, and sure as anything the sky was still
there, right where it didn’t belong, scattered on the ground like confetti left
over from a surprise party we hadn’t had.

I bounded up the stairs, screaming for my
dad. He was a smart guy, and I thought maybe he could fix the problem. Dads
generally know a lot about problems, and sometime they even know enough to be
able to fix them.

“The sky! It fell. The sky is on the front
lawn, Dad. I tried to put it back but….”

“What?” my father asked, as he rolled over
to face me. The space next to him on the bed was empty; the sheets were neat
and tucked in. Mom was sleeping on the couch, again.

“The sky. It’s on the lawn. It’s all blue
and everywhere and it feels like my PJ’s from Grandma and it won’t go back up
where it needs to!”

He rolled the other way to look out the
window, but the faded, floral curtains were drawn shut. “Prob’ly just fog, son.
It’ll pass. Go on downstairs; turn on the coffee pot. I’ll be down in a bit.”

I kicked the side of his bed with my
slippered foot. “The sky fell down, Dad, and coffee isn’t gonna fix it!”

My
father sat up. “Yes, yes, I understand,” he said, as he tied his robe on and
then rubbed his temples with the heels of his hands.

I stomped down the stairs, scared and
infuriated, and peeked out the window. Sure enough, just as I had said, there
was no sky in the sky. I opened up the front door and jumped on the mess that
had found its way onto my lawn. I stomped around. I jumped on what was supposed
to be the sky, angry that it wasn’t being the way it should.

I heard my dad’s footsteps on the stairs;
I flung open the door for him and cried, “Look!”

He did. He blinked a couple of times and
ran his left hand through his hair, like he did after having a fight with my
mother. Then he chewed on his lip.

“That’s the sky, Dad! All over our grass,
just like I told you. That’s a whole bunch of sky!” My voice sounded hollow,
like I was in a cave, only with no echo.

My dad said nothing. He stood there, blinking
his eyes, chewing his lip, and rubbing his gray-streaked hair.

I rushed back into the house, hoping my
mother would prove more helpful than my father. I began to bound up the staircase
towards my parent’s room but turned and headed for the living room instead.

“Mom? I need you to wake up! The sky fell
onto the front lawn. Please get up.”

She rolled on the couch to turn and face
me.

“What, sweetheart?”

“The sky, Mom. Please get up and see it.
Dad’s outside looking at it. It’s messy.”

My mother pushed her disheveled hair out
of her swollen eyes. She sat up and slid her feet into her slippers and stood,
putting her hand on my shoulder.

“Okay, okay. Let’s go see it,” she said, as if
she was just playing along with a game.

She shuffled toward the open front door
with me. As soon as she got a look at the situation outside, she stopped. She made
a little sucking noise as she drew air quickly into her lungs. Her mouth
quivering, she walked out onto the step and stood next to my father. Her eyes
just kept getting wider or maybe her face was just getting smaller.

“I told you…it’s…the sky…” I tried to
explain, hoping they would somehow, in their parental understanding, be able to
make it right again.

But neither said anything.

“Why is it on the grass, and what are we
gonna do? Someone has to do something!” I yelled at my mute parents, aggravated
that I was the only one feeling the need to take some sort of action. I was the
kid! What was I supposed to do about it? Stuff like this wasn’t supposed to
happen. The sky should always be the sky. Some things are just supposed to stay
normal, everyday of your life. But that day, on the front lawn of our home, the
sky had decided it wasn’t the sky anymore. Someone had to fix it, but my
parents just stood gaping, waiting for it to right itself, like somehow it
could.

My dad shook his head and stared at the
sky-covered lawn. My mother stood beside him, refusing to talk or perhaps too
afraid to. She pulled her robe tighter.

Again my father rubbed his hand through
his hair. “Sometimes things are just out of our control, son.”

“Everything will work out for the best,
sweetie,” my mother finally said, again placing her hand on my shoulder.

I pulled away and turned to stare at the two
of them while they stared at the lack of lawn. “No! No it won’t work out, Mom!
What don’t you understand? When the sky falls down, someone has to do something
to fix it. I know it! Please, we’ve gotta do something!”

But, despite my pleading, neither of them did
anything to make things right again.

My father was sitting in the living room, with
the television on. In one hand he held his morning coffee and in the other he
grasped the remote, holding on to it like it was the only thing he still had
control over. Maria McCarthy from the news channel was talking about the
weather like she did every morning. Only, that morning the weather forecast
involved the sky having collapsed onto the earth.

I could see she was trying to be calm,
just like my parents. Everyone was pretending that somehow tomorrow we’d all
wake up and everything would be normal again. As if the next day she’d be
saying the forecast would be back to sunny with a high of 85 and summer would
be restored to its full glory. Maria, the weather woman, smiled. Footage of
other neighborhoods with fallen sky strewed on the ground played across the
screen.

It was then that I knew everything was not
okay at all.

“Sweetheart, come eat some breakfast,” my
mother called from the kitchen. I heard her set a bowl down onto the table and
pour juice into a glass. I didn’t want to take my eyes off the news report. I
wanted to wait for her to announce that someone very smart had come up with a way
to fix this situation. But I knew they hadn’t.

I went and sat at the table, quietly
taking turns gazing at my steaming bowl of oatmeal and out the window at the
chaos outside.

“It will be all right, don’t worry,
sweetie,” said my mother, though I hadn’t said anything to her. She stood
behind me, also looking out the window, running her finger through my messy
hair. “It’ll get fixed. It will all be okay soon.”

I knew things probably weren’t going to be
all right. I had heard that lie too many times before from my parents. Some
things, once they are broken, can’t be fixed, no matter how hard you try. I
knew that adults liked to act like they knew everything. That they somehow saw
that it would be okay. At least that is what they tried to tell me. But it
wouldn’t. The sky had relocated to the front lawn. The world might as well be
ending. At the time, I thought maybe it was. When things go that wrong you know
that they just don’t find ways of becoming right again.

******

When I finished my breakfast, my mother
said, “Sweetie, why don’t you go find Frankie and see if he wants to sell
lemonade with you, like you did yesterday. That was fun, right?”

I gave her a look of nothing can be like it was yesterday.

She gave me back a look of everything is just fine.

We both knew she was lying.

She pulled out my chair and gave me a
gentle nudge to get up. “Go on. Go get dressed and go see if Frankie is up.”

On my way back upstairs I heard my father
on the phone in the living room. He was still watching the news.

“Are things all right where you are,
Robbie?” he asked.

Robbie was my older brother who was away
at college. I ran upstairs before hearing any response. I knew things were a
mess everywhere.

Once I stepped out my door I tried to walk
carefully. If by some miracle someone smarter than any of us did find a way to
fix the sky, I didn’t want to be responsible for doing any damage to it in the
meantime. I walked down the road, to the left, passed three houses with
sky-speckled lawns, to Frankie’s.

I wrapped on the door and he answered, as
if he had been waiting for me to come. “Mom and Dad said I can’t come out
today.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed. My parents had
sent me outside but his were keeping him safely in.

“Did you see what it is like out there?
Does it all look like this?”

“All of it. The sky is everywhere.”

“I knew it!”

“My mom wanted us to sell more lemonade.”

“I’m not supposed to go any farther than
this doorstep.”

“I don’t think it’s dangerous or anything.
I jumped on it a little. Wanna come over and sell lemonade?”

“Okay, I guess.” He quietly shut the door
behind him and made his escape.

We walked back to my house and made a game
of trying to step only on patches of cement or on tufts of green grass peeking
out from beneath the fallen sky. We had played games like this before,
pretending we were jumping from rock to rock, like adventurers crossing a
rushing river, or carefully avoiding hot lava as we escaped an erupting
volcano. Only this wasn’t a game. This was real. It turned out that the games
had been a lot more fun.

We set out our stand right on top of the
sky and mixed up our fresh lemonade. Both of us sat there all morning. We
didn’t have any customers that day.

*******

The following day the sky was still on the
lawn. I think we had all hoped if we just waited it out long enough that we’d
wake up one morning and it would be back to normal. But my father gave up hope
a little faster than the rest of us. He was tired of being cooped up in the
house watching the news and he used the fact that we were out of milk as an
excuse to leave.

I tried to talk him out of it. I was
worried that if he drove on the sky it would damage it even further and our
hope of thing going back to normal would be even smaller.

“Dad! You can’t just go out and drive over
the sky,” I warned him, as I spread my arms across the door to the garage.
“It’s fragile!”

“We need milk”

“We need the sky to be okay, Dad!”

“There isn’t anything anyone can do and we
can’t just sit here waiting for it to work itself out. We need to go on
living.”

“What if you make it worse?”

“We need milk.” He picked me up under the
arms and lifted me out of his way.

I
watched out the window as he backed up the car and left the driveway. The sky
was getting caught up in his tires and was making a sound like my bike did when
I put playing cards in the wheel spokes. I watched him disappear down the road,
rearranging the sky as he went. I chewed on my fingers as hope left my heart.

******

After the sky fell down, nothing was ever
really right again. Everyone gave up trying to fix it. We just had to accept
that things weren’t going to be the same anymore. I was as though everyone
learned to live with the fallen sky, just like it was normal. But some days I
would remember what it used to be like. But that was all it was: a memory. Any
hope of things going back to the way they were before had long faded.

My history class textbook included
pictures of what the sky used to look like before it relocated to the ground.
Reading about what had happened was strange. We were all there. No one could
forget.

******

Now I spent weekdays with my mom and every
other weekend with my dad. My older brother had graduated and gotten married.
Sometimes I saw him on holidays. Frankie’s family had moved away; we never did
get rich off of lemonade.

Things were different. The sky was broken,
so were we, and it’s never going to be the same again.

Part two of a short story drawing inspiration from the lyrics of the classic Eagles song:

*****

I turned the key in the door of
room 6. The nauseating carpet print continued into my chambers, where it met
tired walls. I had expected mirrored ceilings and tacky decor, but was
pleasantly surprised. A simple and typical set up; double bed adorned in less
than promising bedding, uncluttered desk, bedside table and lamp, an outdated
television, floor to ceiling blackout curtains across the one window and a
small bathroom. All the necessities and nothing fancy. I lay my duffle down and fell onto the bed; it
creaked and I sighed. My coworkers were out forgetting their troubles and I was
trapped in this room alone with only my troubles to think about.

I set my keys, wallet, and phone in
the draw of the bedside table. Between them and the customary hotel bible,
which was still wrapped in the plastic it had been purchased in, I set my
wedding ring. I thought of Miriam and tried to remember if I still loved her. I
had left for the conference mid fight, but it didn’t feel bad. Most times were “mid-fight”
now. Just the way things were.

From the drawer I drew the TV
remote. On/off and channel or volume up/down were my only options. With a press
of the red button the TV hummed to life. No guide button, no channel map. The
default channel was all static so I clicked to the next. I didn’t recognize the
show but I couldn’t help but notice the kitchen being portrayed in black and
white looked very much like that of the house I had grown up in, and that the
woman in front of the stove with her back to the camera looked very much like
that of my mother. My own mother had passed away from cancer when I was still
in grade school. Not wanting to spend an already depressing night being
reminded of old sorrows, I flipped to the next channel. Looked like some kids
sports movie; a bunch of little boys on a softball field. The less-than-encouraging
shouts of an angry father could be heard from the bleachers as a young man went
up to bat. Again, next channel; I didn’t want to think of fathers either. Were
there no news or sports channels out here? A woman in a hospital
room, some maternity show. A doctor shaking his head in the foreground. The woman
on the hospital bed was out of focus, but crying. Her frame looked like that of
my Miriam. Like strikingly so. Eerily so. Quickly, next channel. A couple
fighting, shouting, glass bottle breaking on the floor, a door slamming. Too
close to home, next channel. A soap opera-y set with an alluring blonde
speaking, presumably to some lover. The camera panned out to show the back the
man. He had my build, my hair line. Suddenly that channel too went to fuzz. I
flipped backward and forward; where the other shows had been there was now nothing
but hissing black and white specks. I threw the remote to the floor, in both anger and fear. Nothing good on anyway.

I picked up the phone and dialed
the front desk. “Tiffany? It’s room 6, the TV’s broken. I’ve been traveling all
day and I just want to watch the news. Can anyone reset the thing and get it to
work? I’m paying for the room and you gave me a crap TV.”

"Tonight’s band arrives shortly if you want to spend some time
in the courtyard while we get your television working again for you. Perhaps
you can come down to the bar, have a drink on us in the meantime?

I hung up. No further persuasion
needed. A drink of any kind or cost was not something I would ever pass up,
particularly not after a too long day such as the one I was having.

I settled in on the seat of a worn red bar
stool and ordered a Jack and Coke. The wordless bartender slid it my way. Soon
a second followed. No one else was at the bar, but I was comfortable solo.

Outside through french doors I
could see that the band had arrived as was setting up in a gazebo beside the
pool’s patio. In the room’s corner a few guests had gathered around a card
table. They looked up at me for a moment, their eyes saying they didn’t care if
I joined them and didn’t care if I didn’t. I went over to inquire as to what
was being played.

A man with an unkempt beard that
looked older than he was set a well-polished .44 special on the table. “Roulette.”

Apparently, the Russian variety. Alarmed,
I looked to the bartender who looked back blank-faced as if to say “Relax. Let
them.”

Disturbed, I got the impression
that that sort of thing had gone on there before and that no one was worried
about it, but my long day hadn’t yet been long enough and my drinks had been
too few for me to dance with my own destiny at a card table with strangers in
the desert. I left before they could
begin their game against fate.

A familiar tune played out in the
courtyard. People were appearing out of
the desolate night and swaying to the rhythm. The last thing I remember, third
drink in my hand, I wandered out onto the tiled patio to join them.

I've been skimming through online writing prompts and browsing amazon for books which will make me want to write books, but thus far nothing has really sparked any creativity in me. So currently I am instead writing about whatever random thing that gives me that nudge to put words on paper. Sometimes someone else's already well-crafted words grip me in a way that I want to write more about them. Most often, for me, this happens with song lyrics. And for whatever reason the most "further-writing-inspiring" song has always been the same. Hotel California, by the Eagles. Every time I hear the iconic rock song, warning again a seemingly luxurious life of easy money, easy women and an excess of drugs and alcohol, something about the fantastical lyrics and carefully-worded descriptions (view full lyrics here) have always made me think "that would make for a great story..."So here goes. A short story, in parts, inspired by just that:

****

I looked up at the map glowing off
the GPS mounted to the window of my rental car. There weren’t a lot of landmarks,
or really anything at all for that matter, showing up on the screen. My search
for nearby lodging had retrieved one lone result, so I was headed down the dark
desert highway in its direction.

I rubbed my dimming eyes; the day
had been seemingly extra in length and monotonously boring. Initially, I had
welcomed the idea of going to the conference, located in a place with a
fantastical name like Truth or Consequences- it befuddled me that anyone had
ever been granted to power to actually name a town something like that-
thinking it would be refreshing to get away from the norm for a few days.
Everyone else had booked lodging in the resort town near the conference center
and were probably then at the bar having the refreshing time I had hoped for. But unlike them, I had forgotten to make a reservation
in advance, and after several failed attempts at finding an empty room I
ventured to the outskirts of the city to find a stop for the night, quite unrefreshed.

I looked at the map again; 0.3
miles to my destination. Up ahead in the distance a lone neon sign shimmered on
the backdrop of night. Hotel California. Peculiar
name for a hotel in the middle-of –nowhere New Mexico, I thought. The “o” and
the “t” in the sign were burnt out, and what remained was flickering with threat of being the same. The building was large, stucco- faced in the typical
mission style, but poorly-maintained. My hotel definitely looked more fitting
of a motel status title, but I was done giving any preference regarding where I
would be laying my head for the weekend.

I pulled into the poorly lit, near-empty
parking lot and took my duffle from the trunk. I entered the lobby, and
followed the slightly hypnotic rug to the front desk. A young receptionist
with dark hair and excessive eyeliner looked up from the magazine she was
thumbing through. Tiffany, her name
tag read.

“Reservation, sir?”

“No, but it looks like you probably
have some rooms available? Please say you do.”

“Oh plenty of room” she said. “I’ll
put you in room 6, on the first floor.”

Behind her eyeliner were bright
eyes which felt too large for her petite face. I caught myself staring, tried
to think of Miriam instead, and failed. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
My wedding ring, which had been stashed in my pocket for the day, felt suddenly
heavy.

“Breakfast is served between 7 and
9, but the bar is open from 10 am on. All the dining and recreational facilities
are down that hall there.” She gestured with a hand tipped in red lacquer. “We
have a game room where we hold card games, and there is also billiards if you
like. The pool is out back. In the evenings we host local musicians and a lot
of the town comes out to dance and be entertained. There is little else around,
as you might have noticed.”

I nodded. She rambled on about laundry,
TV channels, and room policies, but I failed to absorb any sound as I watched her
mouth move. I was brought back to attention as she slid an antiquated-looking
key over the counter to me.

“…you can check out any time you’d like.”

Again, I gave a nod. She pointed
down the corridor to the left, “Welcome to the Hotel California. Please enjoy
your stay.”

A very wise former English teach and family friend of mine once asked told a question which one of her professors had placed before many years prior. The question had helped to form the course of her life; it took her from wanting to be a writer, to wanting to teach middle school English instead. She shared this memory with me knowing that I too had hopes of being a writer. She wished to challenge me in the same way her professor has challenged her.

DO YOU WANT TO WRITE OR DO YOU WANT TO HAVE WRITTEN?

This professor of hers had claimed at all that all aspiring authors, those with a love of English and literature, with a desire to create art with words could be broken into two categories: those who write and those who want to have written. In some way, that question also became critical in my own life. At the time, I immediately answered "I want to write." It was one of those "moments" that shapes you and you find out who you are. I was one who wanted to write, for the love of writing. Because I had to write.

That question lodged itself deep in my mind and I think on it often. Do I want to write- for the love of writing, for the sake of the craft, because I must and have to? Or do I want to have written- be published, be read, be labeled "author," but not necessary enjoy the ride to that point. Do I write because I am a writer or am I a writer because I write. The distinguishing factors between the two may be subtle, but they do make all the difference in definition.

Most often (and currently), I feel like I fall somewhere in a valley between a writer and a have written. I know I love to write for writing's sake. I've adapted my habits from hand written scrawl to typed text for the sake of modernity, but I know I love to write words. To play with phrases. To paint pictures with a pen. The very craft excites me. But the process of what to do after one has written something does not.

This valley- this rut- has been dug by the fraction of me that is reigned by self-doubt and perfectionism. Fear of judgement. Fear of my words not being liked, not being good enough. The hopes of "have written" frighten me, which causes me to want to write, but only in secret, unread, unseen, unnoticed. Unjudged.

To be a writer, one just has to write. But to be an author, one has to be READ. And to be read is to be judged, either as good or bad or some form of mediocre. Truth be told, that terrifies me. (Now as to why it matters what a publisher or reader may think of me, I have no idea. It shouldn't. But it does. Another problem for another day...)

To be an author, they say, requires thick skin, much like that of a rough and tough rhinoceros. Unfortunately, at this stage I feel more like a new born, fresh to the world, and well-lotioned baby Rhino...who writes. My skin isn't as tough as it needs to be and every opinion cuts deep. So instead of picking up a pen and sending work out into the world to be evaluated and judged by whomever, I plop down on my rhino rump and I hide. Whenever I do write anything, it gets jammed into a filing cabinet and left to collect dust.

Sure, I can write. I could write thousands upon thousands of words and piles of novels, but if they never leave my hard drive, what exactly is the point? I can claim that it is for my own joy, my own betterment, my own sanity that I write, but something in me knows that that isn't the whole truth. In order to change the world, my words have to leave my house. Art, of any kind, should be enjoyed. Perhaps not everyone will like it, but if it elicits a response, any response at all, it is, by definition art.

To be an author, I must be read. That is scary. That is thrilling. I want to write to the point of having written. For better or worse. For richer or poorer. It is time to open up the filing cabinet and harass some publishing houses with persistence. It is time to write and write and write until something good happens. It is time to be a big girl rhino with her name on the front of a cover. It is time that I, Isabella Kiss, stop writing in hiding and get myself read. I need to write, so on my last day I can say "I have written." Ready, set, go.

I have a serious case of writers block; it's going on something like 5 years. As you may see in my profile, I claim to have the ability change the world with merely a stroke of my pen, but in honesty, all I do with a pen these days is jot down lunch orders and scribble grill slips.

Allow me to backtrack. I'm Isabella Kiss. Twenty something, joyously married, cat-mama, crafter of cuteness, cooker deliciousness, fitness fanatic, and part time waitress. I am, however, not a writer.

I once claimed that I was a writer- that I was born to write. That my existence on this planet hinged on the very purpose of penning words. I would write, and you would read what I had had written; of that there was no doubt in my mind.

Growing up, I wrote a lot. Something about blank paper had always drawn me. For as long as I can remember there have been stories in my head. Characters and scenes have ever played themselves out in my mind. It would seem that the Good Lord granted me some sort of excess in the department of imagination.

One fateful day in high school, for a reason I cannot recall, I picked up a pencil and began writing a story. About two days in I decided I needed to be an author and the story evolved into a book. By the end of my junior year, I had written a 350 page fantasy novel. My dream was that it, and many novels to follow, would see publication.That story was professionally edited and I began the process of seeking an agent or publisher who would take interest in my work. I had unrelenting passion. Perhaps overconfident, but I was doubtless, fearless and determined. I WAS MADE TO BE AN AUTHOR. I went into every major library and bookstore in my area and took a photo of the exact spot on the shelves where books penned under Isabella Kiss would one day sit. I was a dreamer with drive. I WAS GOING TO BE A WRITER.

While querying and searching for publication, I drafted sections of other novels and wrote short stories. I journaled. I blogged. I was writing on close-to-daily basis. After graduating, I took a course in freelancing and became certified as a freelance writer. I attended a college (mostly on scholarships obtained by writing) and received an associates (Summa Cum Laude) in Liberal Arts, in hopes that I would one day go on to obtain a degree in Creative Writing and become an influential youth author. Every English professor I encountered in my studies reaffirmed the fact that at least had the ability to write. Short works I wrote were published here and there in college publications, but nothing grand like I had imagined my illustrious literary career to be seemed to be unfolding.

Somewhere in there I also met a dashing young man who shared my interest in writing. Long story short, Once Upon a Time I married him and began an adventure as a military wife. Then, instead of focusing on my alleged writing career I took up other hobbies, other part time jobs, and other wifely duties. After his military time of military service came to an end, and we established ourselves in civilian life; he in school pursuing his dreams of being a master of computers, and I at a restaurant job delivering world famous burgers with crisped cheese wings. Happily ever after...

Somewhere in that settling down I settled. I grew tired of looking for a publisher to take interest in my work (confession: the effort I had put in was far some my best, due to fear of rejection). I distracted myself. I convinced myself I was just too busy to write. My daily soul-felt need to write became a chore I pushed to the end of my to-do list so I would run out of hours in the day before I wrote a single word.

Somewhere in a pile of manuscripts and query letter my passion for the pen had been quenched. Somehow I had smothered a fiery passion with stacks of unpublished paper. The writing stopped. The stories in my head disappeared. Any interest or inspiration I had once had was replaced with frustration and the attitude of a quitter. Insecurity of my words not being good enough to be read and fear of people's opinions and judgments overtook me, and rather than changing the world, anything I had to say was shoved in a filing cabinet never to see the light of day. I, being a very "all or nothing" sort of person, decided that if I wasn't easily obtaining my goal of publication, then I just wouldn't write at all.

People who love me continued to remind me "hey...didn't you write?" That man I married encouraged- begged- me to just pick up a pen and write something, anything at all, but I allowed frustration and "writers block" to stop me every time. I used every excuse and cast blame in all directions. I did a fair amount of adult tantrum throwing and crying. But the fact is, I quit. And I, not the publishing houses, not the military, not my husband, not my job, not anything other than myself, am to blame for that.

I am not a writer...at least not currently. I am a lot of great and wonderful things, but a writer is not one of them. I do many things well, but I do not write well because, currently, I do not write at all.

While I love my life as a wife and waitress, I know (mainly because my excellent husband insists on reminding me; he refuses let me distract myself and quit, much to my frustration) that there is something deep in me that still wants to change the world by my written word. At this point, I don't know if that is young adult fantasy or something entirely different. I've dabbled in the idea of journalism. I've drafted a children's book. I've played around with short stories. I've wondered about pursuing nonfiction. (I have, with certainty, ruled out poetry though!) I know that I definitely have an ability- a gifting- to write. I just don't know to write WHAT at the moment.

In hopes of figuring that out, I just need to write something in the meantime. Anything. I know I have been selling myself short and that I am capable of more- and I hate knowing that. I think I've reached the point where I finally hate it enough to stop making excuses, shedding pointless tears and being frustrated and actually take some action. Hence this blog. I have no idea what I am going to write, or if it will cause any readership I may gain mental suffering in reading it. Perhaps I will just be venting my jumbled aspiring author brains out into cyberspace, but the hope is that just letting words out of my head and into the open world will somehow conquer this "block" I have placed myself under and perhaps beat my fear of my words being judged.

I intend to experiment with writing prompts, free writing, tweaking existing story lines and perhaps dabbling in something resembling journalist nonfiction. Really, anything. I'm hoping that the "responsibility" of a blog will somehow trap me into writing on a regular basis, and maybe somewhere in my entrapment inspiration will strike and my prior passion will return. Even lousy writing is better than no writing, and sometimes just getting things flowing can lead to something spectacular. Or so I hope. Truth told, I really don't know what I am doing here. Truth told, you may want to stop reading now. All I really know is writers write, so that is what I must do.